Queen must be used to collecting awards by now, after 40 years performing together as a rock band. But Brian May and Roger Taylor looked genuinely enthusiastic at the MTV EMA Awards in Belfast last night, where they collected the gong for Global Icon.
Katy Perry, a vision in pink - from her highly-stylised hair down to her gravity-defying heels - presented the award to the veteran rockers, telling the audience how Queen "blew her mind" when she was a teenager, living in a tiny town, with very little exposure to rock music.
In collecting the award, Brian May spoke of his pride at being around for the beginning of MTV. Queen famously helped put music videos on the map with their 1976 ground-breaker Bohemian Rhapsody.
It was impossible to remember Queen's best moments, without marking the absence of their charismatic frontman Freddie Mercury, who died in 1991.
A succession of singers have joined the band for vocal duties in the years since, and last night it was the turn of American Idol winner Adam Lambert, who took to the stage with May and Taylor for the evening's final performance.
A medley of Queen hits, from The Show Must Go On, through We Will Rock You and finishing with a resounding We are the Champions, gave May the chance to strike his familiar guitar notes and, while no-one is Freddy Mercury, Lambert was a well-matched stand-in, stylish in a long leather coat, velvet black quiff and flamboyant manner, during a turn that will do him no harm in finding a bigger audience in Europe.
SLIDESHOW: See the stars at the MTV EMAs...